The DCI Group calls itself a “strategic public affairs consulting firm” and boasts that it handles corporate issues like political campaigns. “We are a political firm and all of our partners have political campaign experience. We thrive in competitive circumstances, and are used to fluid situations and tight deadlines,” their website claims. DCI Group offers services that include national, state and local lobbying; coalition building; and generating “grasstops” and constituent support for issues. The firm has been linked to several industry-funded coalitions that pose as grassroots organizations. Perhaps it comes as no surprise as DCI advertises its ability to provide “third party support” to clients. “Corporations seldom win alone,” the group’s website says. “Whatever the issue, whatever the target—elected officials, regulators or public opinion—you need reliable third party allies to advocate your cause. We can help you recruit credible coalition partners and engage them for maximum impact. It’s what we do best.”[1]

The use of third-party front groups is common in the business of swaying public opinion. Traditionally, however, strategic influencers view the news media as the channel through which their message flows from the front group to the target audience. DCI and its affiliates offer “direct contact” that bypasses the media entirely. The client’s message is directly delivered via phone banks, regular mail and/or the internet. Direct contact provides the campaigners with complete control over the message. Freed from the filters created by news outlets, they can be as biased and inflammatory as the message shaper deems necessary.

With a staff of 80 and a target of $60 million for their budget, $40 million of which was raised by February 2013, Fix the Debt is best described as an "Astroturf supergroup." According to PR Week, Fix the Debt has numerous Washington, D.C. PR firms/lobby shops helping it, many of whom also lobby for Fix the Debt firms. These include DCI Group,[2]Glover Park Group,[3] and Dewey Square Group,[4] which have lobbied for multiple Fix the Debt corporations in multiple years. For example, DCI Group lobbied for Morgan Stanley on tax issues in 2006[5] and 2007.[6] Fix the Debt is also using Proof Integrated Communications (PIC), a unit of the PR firm Burson-Marsteller, for its aggressive advertising push.[7] As Fix the Debt creates more Astroturf state chapters, they also engage PR firms at the state level to carry their message.

In the run-up to the “fiscal cliff,” these firms launched a flashy $3 million media ad campaign, blanketing Capitol Hill with TV, Internet, Metro and newspaper ads.[8] PIC's portion of the campaign included "parody recreations of well-known advertising slogans," such as: the slogan "i'm fixin' it" on a carton of fries to imitate the McDonald's "i'm lovin' it" campaign; the slogan "Got debt?" to imitate the famous "Got milk?" dairy ad campaign; and the slogan "Just fix it" to imitate the Nike "Just do it" campaign.[7]

Fix the Debt CEOs are treated with fawning respect by the mainstream media. Fix the Debt’s David Cote "brings serious financial muscle to the table" when he pushes "market credible solutions," says the Wall Street Journal.[9] Cote is free to lecture the country on the hazards of Social Security, given his $78 million dollars in personal pension assets. The fact that he underfunds his employees’ pensions by $2.7 billion[10] is never noted; and the fact that he heads a company paying a negative tax rate (-0.7 percent)[11] is apparently not considered relevant.

December 2012 TV ad produced for Fix the Debt

The campaign had the most presence in the Washington, D.C. area, but Bassik said that "future iterations of the effort will use images of regular people to show lawmakers that constituents also want a bi-partisan deal to take place." Fix the Debt's other PR agency partners, DCI Group, Glover Park Group, and Dewey Square Group, were to do additional research and "find average citizens."[7] Dewey Square and DCI are also handling "grass-roots outreach" -- i.e. Astroturf -- for the campaign, according to Politico, and "firms are still pitching the coalition, hoping to get business for potential television ads" as of December 5, 2012.[12]

On December 16, 2012, Fix the Debt released its first television ad (see video), with a six-figure buy, featuring "interviews with several Americans who talk about their concerns over America’s debt" and accompanying text, "We need to do more than avoid the fiscal cliff."[8]

Burson-Marsteller's Johanna Schneider told PR Week that the ad campaign was the biggest public policy campaign she had seen in some time. It also included full-page ads in The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The Hill, Roll Call, Politico, and National Journal.[7]Politico reported of Fix the Debt's campaign, "Message men, lobbyists, grassroots firms[,] and lawyers are raking in cash . . . It's a classic Washington phenomenon: Ahead of a major deal, corporate clients and other groups pay a premium to the Washington influence machinery to make sure their interests are protected."

This article is part of the Center for Media and Democracy's investigation of Pete Peterson's Campaign to "Fix the Debt." Please visit our main SourceWatch page on Fix the Debt.

About Fix the Debt

The Campaign to Fix the Debt is the latest incarnation of a decades-long effort by former Nixon man turned Wall Street billionaire Pete Peterson to slash earned benefit programs such as Social Security and Medicare under the guise of fixing the nation's "debt problem." Through a special report and new interactive wiki resource, the Center for Media and Democracy -- in partnership with the Nation magazine -- exposes the funding, the leaders, the partner groups, and the phony state "chapters" of this astroturf supergroup. Learn more at PetersonPyramid.org and in the Nation magazine.

ALEC is a corporate bill mill. It is not just a lobby or a front group; it is much more powerful than that. Through ALEC, corporations hand state legislators their wishlists to benefit their bottom line. Corporations fund almost all of ALEC's operations. They pay for a seat on ALEC task forces where corporate lobbyists and special interest reps vote with elected officials to approve “model” bills. Learn more at the Center for Media and Democracy's ALECexposed.org, and check out breaking news on our PRWatch.org site.

U.S. Think Tanks and Azerbaijan

The most recent controversy surrounding the DCI group is their decision to take on as a client the government of Azerbaijan, a resource-rich country plagued with corruption and human rights issues.[14] As part of their $20,000 per month contract, DCI will provide "strategic PR, media outreach and establishment of relationships with U.S. think tanks."[14] According to the contract, DCI seeks to establish relationships between U.S. think tanks and the Azerbaijani government because think tanks are “vital contributors to the formulation of U.S. policy and serve as validators of official policy positions."[14]

U.S. Department of State notes that Azerbaijan is “one of the most important spots in the world for oil exploration and development" but rates the country's human rights record as “poor, especially with respect to freedom of assembly, freedom of expression, the administration of justice, and the respect of property rights.[14]

Human Rights Watch has condemned the Azerbaijaini government for its treatment of "imprisoned journalists, human rights defenders, and political opposition activists"[15] after police forces attacked anti-corruption protesters in the capital city of Baku in October 2012.[16]

The group posed as a liberal grassroots organization and launched a $1.6 million ad campaign asking viewers to tell their senators, “vote against this phony ‘financial reform.’ Support real reform, stop ‘too big to fail.’” Stop Too Big To Fail has also launched diaries on netroots sites like Daily Kos and FireDogLake and posted columns on Huffington Post.[17] The group even went as far as to dupe Simon Johnson, a former chief economist at the IMF, now at MIT, into participating "in a media conference call purportedly on the topic of breaking up large banks."[17] To his dismay, they later displayed a photo of Johnson, who is a prominent advocate of breaking up the big banks, on their webpage.[17]

This was not the first time DCI has helped large corporations to create a phony “consumers group.” DCI has manufactured "grassroots" campaigns for the tobacco industry in fake "smoker's rights groups" and has managed public relations for the Coalition to Protect Patients' Rights, an anti-health reform group.

The Associated Press reported October 20, 2008 that "Freddie Mac secretly paid a Republican consulting firm $2 million to kill legislation that would have regulated and trimmed the mortgage finance giant and its sister company, Fannie Mae, three years before the government took control to prevent their collapse. In the cross hairs of the campaign carried out by DCI of Washington were Republican senators and a regulatory overhaul bill sponsored by Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb. DCI's chief executive is Doug Goodyear, whom John McCain's campaign later hired to manage the GOP convention in September. ... The Republican senators targeted by DCI began hearing from prominent constituents and financial contributors, all urging the defeat of Hagel's bill because it might harm the housing boom. The effort generated newspaper articles and radio and TV appearances by participants who spoke out against the measure. Inside Freddie Mac headquarters in 2005, the few dozen people who knew what DCI was doing referred to the initiative as "the stealth lobbying campaign," according to three people familiar with the drive. They spoke only on condition of anonymity, saying they fear retaliation if their names were disclosed." [18]

Representing Burma Spells Controversy for John McCain and the RNC

The BBC reported May 12, 2008, that "two aides to Republican presidential nominee John McCain...stood down over ties to a lobbying firm that has represented Burma's military leaders. Douglas Goodyear, who had been chosen to run the 2008 Republican convention, said he was resigning 'so as not to become a distraction in this campaign'... Both Mr. Goodyear and the second aide to resign this weekend, Doug Davenport, worked for the lobbying firm DCI, the former as its chief executive."[19]

Doug Goodyear, the CEO of DCI Group, was selected to manage the forthcoming Republican National Convention (RNC), in St. Paul, Minnesota because of his "management experience and expertise", a spokeswoman for John McCain had said. Michael Isikoff reported in Newsweek that in 2002 DCI was paid $348,000 to represent Burma's military junta. "It also led a PR campaign to burnish the junta's image, drafting releases praising Burma's efforts to curb the drug trade and denouncing 'falsehoods' by the Bush administration that the regime engaged in rape and other abuses," Isikoff reported. Goodyear defended the company's work: "It was our only foreign representation, it was for a short tenure, and it was six years ago," he said. Shortly after the story broke, the RNC issued a media release quoting Goodyear stating he had resigned "so as not to become a distraction in this campaign." [20]

After Goodyear left the McCain campaign, he said DCI worked with a "moderate faction within the Myanmar government that sought assistance in working alongside the U.S. government in its fight against the opium trade and Myanmar’s AIDS epidemic. Recognizing the implications of this effort, DCI Group agreed to take on this project on the condition that the Myanmar government demonstrate a major confidence-building commitment and agree to release a number of political detainees including Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi." [21]

Tobacco Industry and the Tea Party

Connections between the tobacco industry, third-party allies and the Tea Party, from the 1980's (top) through 2012 (bottom). The thick black line connects CSE with its direct successor organisations(Source:Tobacco Control[22])

According to a study published February 8, 2013 in the journal Tobacco Control, "Rather than being a purely grassroots movement that spontaneously developed in 2009, the Tea Party has developed over time, in part through decades of work by the tobacco industry and other corporate interests."[22] The DCI Group was behind this effort through their consultation services to Americans for Prosperity and FreedomWorks, both of whom have worked to oppose smoke-free laws across the United States since at least 2006.[22]

DCI’s Past

Ties to Big Tobacco

What the DCI Group “does best”—creating “credible coalition partners”—is a skill that the group’s managing partners—Tom Synhorst, Doug Goodyear, and Tim Hyde—developed during nearly a decade of work in the 1990s for R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company.

DCI chair Thomas J. Synhorst got his start working in the 1980s as an aide for Senator Charles Grassley (R-Iowa). In 1988 Synhorst ran Robert Dole’s presidential primary campaign in Iowa, winning the state’s early caucus over George H.W. Bush. He later worked on Dole’s 1996 presidential bid, having by then set up the political consulting and telemarketing firm, Direct Connect, Inc. Simultaneously, Synhorst also worked as a Midwestern field representative for R.J. Reynolds. Some details of his work in that capacity can be found through internet searches of RJR’s internal documents that were publicly released as part of the states attorneys general lawsuit against the tobacco industry. As early as 1990, Synhorst’s name turns up in in a letter from RJR field operations manager Mark Smith. The letter outlines the tobacco company’s strategy for undermining a workplace smoking ban at a Boeing plant in Wichita, Kansas. Synhorst was one of the RJR field coordinators suggested to meet with a Boeing employee who opposed the anti-smoking policy.[23]

The work of a field coordinator for RJR included keeping track of state and local smoking bans and cigarette tax initiatives; monitoring workplace smoking bans; meeting with company sales representatives; developing and supporting “smoker’s rights” groups, including setting up meetings, circulating petitions, and providing materials; contacting school districts concerning RJR’s youth program; placing people in public meetings and meetings with legislators to support the tobacco industry’s position; getting letters to the editor printed in local and regional newspapers; and creating alliances with organizations with similar concerns, such as anti-tax groups.

In one internal memo, field representatives were instructed: “Xerox like crazy. When a favorable letter to the editor is printed, getting people to copy the letters and send them to their elected officials with a note saying (essentially) ‘This is what I think, too,’ is key. [Letters to the editor] now become a two-step process: Step One is getting them published. Step Two is circulating them as widely as possible.”[24]

The DCI Group’s CEO, Douglas M. Goodyear, used to work on behalf of R.J. Reynolds. Before joining the DCI group, he was a vice president at Walt Klein and Associates, a PR firm whose work for RJR dates back to at least the1980s. In 1993, Goodyear was instrumental in the creation of Ramhurst Corporation, an organization that received money from R.J. Reynolds to ensure that tobacco industry efforts in Washington were supported by and coordinated with RJR’s nation-wide fake grassroots operations. According to internal RJR documents, in 1994 Ramhurst received $2.6 million for “executing tactical programs on federal, state or local issues; developing a network of smokers’ rights groups and other coalition partners within the region that will speak out on issues important to the Company; implementing training and communication programs designed to inform activists and maintain their ongoing involvement in the grassroots movement.”[25] Synhorst was one of Ramhurst’s field operators.

Timothy N. Hyde, another DCI employee, was the senior director of public issues at R.J. Reynolds from 1988 to 1997. Hyde oversaw all of RJR’s PR campaigns. His weekly reports, also available in the R.J. Reynolds online archive, provide a running history of the discussion of tobacco in the public sphere and the industry’s efforts to shape that discussion.

With Goodyear’s expertise at coordinating astroturf activities in all 50 states, Synhorst’s on-the-ground field experience combined with his telemarketing work, and Hyde’s years of corporate work, the DCI Group offers clients a vast body of experience and contacts. The tobacco industry’s efforts in the 1990s to fight regulations, taxes and lawsuits created a money-soaked training ground where dozens of political operatives and strategists learned their craft. Since most of the anti-tobacco efforts were led by Democrats, tobacco industry money began flowing primarily into Republican coffers, further strengthening ties between GOP political advisors and the underworld of fake grassroots campaigning.

All these factors have made the DCI Group and its sibling companies a natural choice to help top U.S. companies such as Microsoft and highly-regulated sectors such as the pharmaceutical industry as they, too, have sought to fend off regulators, consumer advocates, and trial lawyers.

Money from Microsoft

Microsoft’s decision to hire DCI came as the company faced an antitrust lawsuit from the U.S. Justice Department in the 1990s. By 2000, Microsoft was spending millions of dollars on contributions to Republican and Democratic campaign war chest, think tanks, and ostensibly independent trade associations as well as on payments to high-powered lobbyists, public relations, and political operatives. Hoping to sway public opinion and the opinion of state and federal officials, the software giant built up a wide network of supporters, with its sponsorship of those groups mostly invisible to the public.

Journo-lobbyists

AT&T and Microsoft have found some of their most consistent and enthusiastic support in articles posted on TechCentralStation.com, a now defunct quasi-news site that featured free-market opinion and analysis pieces. Founded in 2000, Tech Central Station (TCS) was “hosted” by conservative financial columnist James K. Glassman. Shortly before the collapse of the 1990s dot-com bubble, Glassman authored a remarkably nonprophetic work titled Dow 36,000: The New Strategy for Profiting From the Coming Rise in the Stock Market. He is also a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a think tank funded by corporations and conservative foundations such as the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, the John M. Olin Foundation and the Scaife Foundations. Until recently he was a columnist for the Washington Post, which finally ended the relationship after concluding that Glassman’s numerous other entanglements conflicted with his role as a journalist purporting to offer expert financial analysis.

TCS did not publicly disclose its relationship to DCI until it was uncovered by Washington Monthly editor Nicholas Confessore, who wrote about it in December 2003. “After I requested comment, the Web site was changed,” Confessore wrote. “Where it formerly stated that ‘Tech Central Station is published by Tech Central Station, L.L.C.,’ it now reads ‘Tech Central Station is published by DCI Group, L.L.C.’”

The two organizations, Confessore explained, “share most of the same owners, some staff, and even the same suite of offices in downtown Washington, a block off K Street. As it happens, many of DCI’s clients are also ‘sponsors’ of the site it houses. TCS not only runs the sponsors’ banner ads; its contributors aggressively defend those firms’ policy positions, on TCS and elsewhere.

“James Glassman and TCS have given birth to something quite new in Washington: journo-lobbying,” Confessore continued. “It’s an innovation driven primarily by the influence industry. Lobbying firms that once specialized in gaining person-to-person access to key decision-makers have branched out. The new game is to dominate the entire intellectual environment in which officials make policy decisions, which means funding everything from think tanks to issue ads to phony grassroots pressure groups. But the institution that most affects the intellectual atmosphere in Washington, the media, has also proven the hardest for K Street to influence—until now.”[26]

Burmese Junta

DCI seems willing to work with some of the most controversial clients in the world. In 2002, it received $340,000 for eight months of work for the Union of Myanmar (Burma) State Peace & Development Council. The Washington Post’s Al Kamen wrote, “DCI’s filings with the Justice Department offer an unusual glimpse into the efforts by the Rangoon junta. DCI lobbyists, featuring Charles Francis, a longtime family friend of the Bushes, ran a sophisticated campaign to improve the regime’s image—and steer the conversation away from its rampant human rights abuses and such.”

Francis “even set up two meetings with White House National Security Council Southeast Asia director Karen B. Brooks,” Kamen continued, “—an unusual feat given that Burma is under U.S. sanctions and its top officials are barred from coming here—to tout Burma’s cooperation on anti-drug, HIV/AIDs and anti-terrorism efforts and in finding the remains of U.S. soldiers from World War II.” After lobbying congressional officials, the Defense Department, and well connected think tanks, the “campaign was on the verge of success—the State Department was about to certify the regime—but the administration backed off amid pressure from the Hill, human rights groups and the media.”

The Drug Industry

DCI also worked on a campaign to generate positive press for the contentious Medicare act of 2003. The main force behind the Medicare act was the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America(PhRMA), one of the country’s largest and most influential trade associations. PhRMA spent millions of dollars and used dozens of lobbyists including the DCI Group to get the act passed. Even so, the law was so controversial even among Republican legislators that it barely won approval, even after the party’s leadership violated normal voting procedures to push it through. Following its passage, The Hill reported in September 2004 that DCI was “offering healthcare consultants $3,750 plus expenses over six weeks to generate positive news stories about the drug card and offer support to Congress for voting for the Medicare drug law.”[27]

According to an email written by the the DCI Group’s Starlee Rhoades, the publicity campaign ran from September 15 to October 31. The client behind the campaign, Rhoades wrote, was “RetireSafe, which has sponsored the hiring of healthcare consultants.” RetireSafe is a project of the Council for Government Reform, a corporate-backed group that advocates privatization of Social Security and other government services. DCI, asked seniors, their families and healthcare workers “to send letters to their congressman and senators thanking them for supporting the Medicare benefit, or asking for that support in the future. We have help available to write letters if the signer is not comfortable drafting the letter entirely on their own.”

Viral Videos and Global Warming

In August 2006, the Wall Street Journal reported on a short video titled "Al Gore's Penguin Army," which belittled the threat of global warming (suggesting viewers "stop exhaling") and made fun of the former vice-president, whose 2006 movie "An Inconvenient Truth" stressed the need for action on global warming. The video, posted on the video-sharing website YouTube, had a "home-made, humorous quality," yet as the Wall Street Journal reported, the filmmaker's email "originated from a computer registered to DCI Group."[28]

The video was promoted by ads that appeared when people searched for the phrases "Al Gore" or "Global Warming" on Google, but these ads "were removed shortly after The Wall Street Journal contacted DCI." The firm "declines to say whether or not DCI made the anti-Gore penguin video," but an Exxon Mobil spokesperson said they "did not fund" and "did not approve it." What is certain is that "political operatives, public relations experts and ad agencies" are increasingly using video-sharing websites like YouTube to shape public opinion. Ogilvy & Mather "plans to post amateur-looking videos on web sites to spare word-of-mouth buzz about Foster's beer," and AT&T has used YouTube to post videos against net neutrality.[28]

DCI's former website, Tech Central Station, also "sought to raise doubts about the science of global warming and about Mr. Gore's film." [28]

References

↑DCI Group lobbied for Morgan Stanley on tax issues in 2006 and 2007, and in 2012 has lobbied for Verizon and ExxonMobil. Senate lobbying records.

↑Glover Park Group has lobbied in 2012 for Visa, Inc., on tax issues. It has also lobbied for DuPont, Exelon, General Electric, JP Morgan Chase, Lockheed Martin, News Corporation, Pfizer, Sodexho, UnitedHealth Group and other corporations that would get tax breaks under Fix the Debt’s initiatives, and for the American Bankers Association and PhRMA. Senate lobbying records.

↑Dewey Square Group has lobbied for AT&T, Citigroup and Visa. Senate lobbying records.

↑DCI Group, Lobbying Report, filed with U.S. Congress on behalf of client Morgan Stanley, July 1 - December 31, 2006.

↑DCI Group, Lobbying Report, filed with U.S. Congress on behalf of client Morgan Stanley, January 1 - June 30, 2007.